Highlights from the IAS H2 2020 Media Quality Report
Reflecting on an unprecedented year of lockdown with significantly increased screen time generating massive volumes of ad impressions, IAS joined IAB Canada’s Community Uninterrupted for a webinar to share a valuable assessment of the overall quality of the media supply chain in a bumper crop year.
Alun Manton, Account Executive at Integral Ad Science (IAS) shared key insights from IAS’ most recent H2 2020 Media Quality Report which uses a proprietary Quality Impression Metric to highlight key campaign trends. The study covers important benchmarks like viewability, ad fraud and brand safety, across display, video mobile web. This year the study featured two new channels of measurement: Connected TV (CTV) and in-app advertising, across an impressive 20 different markets.
Here are some key benchmark findings relevant to the Canadian media supply chain followed by helpful tips on how to help drive improved results for respective metrics in the back half of this year.
Viewability Rates Continue to Improve in Canada
- Canada was one of the few countries that showed an increase in viewability across all mobile environments (web and in-app) with a stunning YOY improvement for mobile video (70.5% for H2), ranking Canada second (behind the US), while leading the pack in desktop viewability with +3.6% YOY (77.1%)
- Time in-view averages for display remained relatively unchanged globally, however in Canada we saw an increase in desktop display with an additional 1.7 seconds in-view (8% YOY increase). Mobile app display saw the biggest reduction of time in-view (-12% YOY) but Canada still ranked in the top five (fourth) for time-in-view worldwide.
Best Practices to Improve viewability:
- Following industry standards.
- Ensure measurement partners are removing fraudulent impressions from their viewability metrics.
- Leverage optimization solutions for best chance at viewable ads
- Keep up to date with new ad formats.
Ad Fraud on the Decline
When looking at ad fraud (which can include inventory generated by bots, falsified user characteristics and hiding ads behind page elements) the study reported that overall, global ad fraud rates improved. For campaigns that did not leverage optimization tools and strategies, they encountered levels of fraud that were up to 11x higher than those optimized against.
- In Canada we saw a 0.2% Ad fraud rate across Mobile web video (down from 0.7% YOY). Canada trailed only France’s 0.1% ad fraud rate in H2 2020.
Best Practices to Prevent Ad Fraud:
- Blocking fraudulent impressions before they hit the ad server.
- Avoid bidding on fraudulent users, websites, and apps by applying automated optimization solutions.
- Use block lists and/or inclusion lists.
Brand Safety is an Area of Concern
- Following the global trend, brand risk levels in Canada were higher across most formats.
- A lower share of brand risk did relate to illegal drug content across all formats, however there was also an increase of hate speech content that posed brand safety concerns across all ad formats.
Best Practices for Brand Safety:
- Define & refine your brands risk thresholds as often as you can, as they are constantly changing (a useful reference guide to brand suitability through context taxonomy).
- Domain protection is not enough. Make sure you’re using page-level protection.
- Leverage brand safety optimization solutions.
- Implement blocking to your brand safety strategy.
- Make sure your brand safety partner can evaluate and understand the risk of content in a variety of different languages.
- Ask questions; understand your partner’s capabilities and their brand safety methodology.
To learn more about standardized tools available for you to access today, please visit IAB’s Standards – Brand Safety and Ad Fraud. A full copy of this webinar recording can be found in the IAB Canada Knowledge Centre.